>> reporter: cnn has learned that chuck hagel's confirmation to be the next defense secretary appears to be all but certain. the reason we can report that is by some excellent digging by our producers. what they have found out is they have found at least five republican senators who have said that they would oppose any filibuster to block hagel's nomination. so mathematically what that would mean is even if there would be a filibuster, which is still an if, he would likely have the votes to overcome that and would go on to become the next defense secretary. they talked to a lot of senators, a lot of senators' offices and they came up with five. only two of them are actually going to support hagel's nomination, but the other three, richard burr, john mccain, and todd coburn have all told us they would oppose a filibuster if it came to that. we don't know when the vote will happen. first he has to go through committee. that will likely happen later this week. the senate vote will happen shortly after that. this is, again, some really enterprising reporting from our producers, ted stray